Newly released court documents depict an image of Southern Baptist leaders’ duplicity in dealing with clergy sex abuse.
The documents derive from the defamation lawsuit brought by former seminary professor David Sills, and that lawsuit stems from the sexual abuse allegations brought forward by Jennifer Lyell, a person many of us cared about greatly.
As summarized by Baptist News Global, the documents show that “while SBC leaders were publicly apologizing and launching task forces, they were privately disparaging victims, managing liability and ensuring their own survival.”
Christa Brown
This contrast between the public and the private is something that will surprise few clergy sex abuse survivors. We’ve experienced firsthand the two-faced treachery of Southern Baptist leaders’ duplicity — many of us for decades.
We’ve grieved their duplicity a thousand times over.
With our very bones, we’ve cried out against its darkness.
From what I’ve seen, there’s not a basin in the world that’s big enough to wash away the blood on the hands of Southern Baptist leaders. Their duplicitous tactics have decimated countless lives, including Jen Lyell’s.
The reality is almost every Southern Baptist entity, affiliated state conventions and a great many Southern Baptist churches have a history of duplicity in responding to sexual abuse allegations. A few stories manage to rise into the public domain, often thanks to lawsuits, but most stay hidden. Such is the nature of duplicity. It happens behind the scenes.
“Their duplicitous tactics have decimated countless lives, including Jen Lyell’s.”
Like cockroaches between the walls, most duplicitous deeds hide in the dark. But wherever you see a few, you can be sure there are many more.
In this particular Southern Baptist story, almost everyone has engaged with that darkness. From Al Mohler to O.S. Hawkins to Jonathan Howe, the story holds no heroes. I urge you to read it for yourselves. Sit with it.
And the system in which such darkness thrives? It remains the same. If nothing else is clear from the newly released documents, it should be this: “The SBC and its institutions lacked sufficient structures or processes to investigate claims of abuse.”
That reality hasn’t changed. And the suffering it causes has not abated.
But again, this duplicitous darkness is something that hundreds of survivors have encountered over and over.
After all, few of us will forget the anti-survivor amicus brief multiple Southern Baptist leaders filed, putting all their weight and influence on the side against justice for childhood sexual abuse survivors. They filed it behind the scenes even as, out in front of the curtain, they were performing their song and dance of caring.
And few of us will forget how former Southern Baptist President Bart Barber quietly authorized that anti-survivor amicus brief on behalf of the whole of the 13 million member Southern Baptist Convention, even as, publicly, he was bragging about his appointments to an abuse reform task force — a task force that ultimately implemented near nothing.
And few of us will forget how the sex abuse task force members and advisers — the very people who were supposed to be advocating for survivors — instead parroted SBC propaganda and hyped the purported “launch” of a clergy abuser database that, in reality, was nothing but an empty shell with no data at all. (Perhaps for some, this was more a matter of enmeshed naivety than duplicity, but either way, it was definitely trust-busting.)
And few of us will forget how, even as he was proclaiming his focus on abuse response strategies, SBC Executive Committee President Jeff Iorg refused to denounce the relentless smears of a man who’s been baselessly attacking abuse survivors for years. Indeed, behind the scenes, Iorg even allowed the man to think Iorg agreed with him.
And few of us will forget how the SBC baited survivors with representations of a sexual abuse hotline that would further accountability, when in reality the hotline served as little more than a Machiavellian means for SBC leaders to shape a rationalization for their own resistance to reforms.
“So much duplicity adds up.”
Hollow public words, impotent task forces, phony dog-and-pony shows, performative platitudes and behind-the-scenes betrayals. All this is what has become the norm in Southern Baptist leaders’ handling of clergy sex abuse.
So much duplicity adds up. It’s why Southern Baptist leaders now hold zero credibility on dealing with clergy sex abuse.
But even worse than leaders’ forfeiture of credibility is how their feckless duplicity helps to fuel the SBC’s long-continuing clergy sex abuse crisis. Without the duplicitous complicity of so many Southern Baptist leaders, clergy sex abuse could not persist so rampantly, nor could the SBC’s system of abuse impunity prevail so tenaciously.
To survivors, I say this: As painful as all this is, seeing behind the curtain also can be a source of future strength. Let us remember the duplicity of Southern Baptist leaders so we will not be used as pawns in their rigged performances and will not fall prey to their orchestrated charades.
And to everyone else, I say this: Please, cultivate your skepticism of everything Southern Baptist leaders say and do with respect to clergy sex abuse.
Truth is the only way forward.
I’m reminded of what Jen Lyell once said: “I do not need to be under oath to tell the truth.”
In this whole sordid saga, Jen is the one who provided an example of truthfulness. Her story stayed the same. She held no duplicity. I wish I could say the same for Southern Baptist leaders.
Truth: It’s what all abuse survivors want, and it’s what we encounter so rarely within the Southern Baptist Convention.
Christa Brown, a retired appellate attorney, is the author of Baptistland: A Memoir of Abuse, Betrayal, and Transformation. Follow her on X @ChristaBrown777 and on Bluesky @christabrown.bsky.social.